$12 million worth of funding<\/a> until it was satisfied police had met their breath test targets.<\/p>\nNZTA commissioned an independent analysis of breath testing data to try and identify the full scale of falsely recorded tests.<\/p>\n
That report, by WSP, was released by NZTA to RNZ on Friday.<\/p>\n
Do you know more? Email sam.sherwood@rnz.co.nz<\/p>\n
The report said the independent analysis initially identified a total of up to 111,000 “unique anomalous tests” between 1 July, 2024 and 30 September, 2025.<\/p>\n
These tests were identified through two methodologies.<\/p>\n
The report said police advised they did not support all the findings from the analysis, due to the analysis being based on “incorrect assumptions”.<\/p>\n
“As many of the identified irregular tests could be explained as legitimate operational activity.”<\/p>\n
![\"No](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/4OAPCB6_image_crop_37762\")
<\/p>\n
\nPhoto: RNZ\n<\/p>\n
Police voiced concern with one of the methodologies used that analysed short time interval clustered tests.<\/p>\n
“This methodology aimed to identify tests undertaken on a single device at a faster rate than it would be possible to process drivers through a legitimate checkpoint operation, which may indicate that the tests were not performed on actual drivers,” the report said.<\/p>\n
However, police said it was possible for an efficent checkpoint to operate at a rate of less than 20 seconds between drivers. WSP then removed this methodology from its final report and irregular test count.<\/p>\n
A further review of the data found there were a total of 42,678 irregular breath tests.<\/p>\n
An NZTA spokesperson told RNZ police had met their targets.<\/p>\n
“With the irregular breath tests removed from reporting, a total of 3,178,981 breath screening tests were conducted by Police for the period covering Q1-Q3 of the 2025\/26 financial year (1 July 2025 to 31 Mar 2026), exceeding the financial year to date target of 2,475,000 by 703,981 (28% above target).”<\/p>\n
The agency had authorised $18 million of funding to police.<\/p>\n
“NZTA is continuing to work with NZ Police to ensure ongoing confidence in reporting of road policing activity through the Road Policing Investment Programme (RPIP),” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Police have been approached for comment.<\/p>\n
Transport Minister Chris Bishop told RNZ on Friday it was “disappointing that this issue occurred at all”.<\/p>\n
“I am also frustrated by how long it has taken to release the report.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: RNZ \/ Alex Perrotet An independent analysis of police breath testing data found more than 42,000 “irregular”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-439229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}